YOUR GOVERNMENT IS HERE TO HELP ITSELF TO YOU
(C)1995 Alan M. Schwartz
The Tenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, the
last entry of the Bill of Rights, reserves for the states those
powers and authorities not specifically delegated to the Federal
Government. In practice this is an operational black hole, for
if your life is not in compliance with what legions of paper-
pushers inhabiting a despoiled East Coast malarial swamp
(vanished wetlands!) spew forth from their word processors,
Washington simply forgets to send you any Federal aid. This is
not extortion; this is policy. In what festering sores are
Federal thumbs being thrust and spread? The phrase "to piss your
pants" has not gone without regulatory oversight.
Our elected legislators and appointed bureaucrats are busy with
more than merely plundering our wallets with taxes or devoting
145 closely typed pages to defining a cabbage. I applaud the
Journal of the American Medical Association 273(17) 1366 (1995)
for giving us a clue to their professional relentlessness. I
stand in awe at the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act (OBRA,
1987) [Federal Register, Sept 26, 1991, 56:48865-48921]; The
Agency for Health Care Policy and Research (AHCPR) [Publication
92-0038, 1992]; and the Resident Assessment Protocol on Urinary
Incontinence [Health Care Financing Administration, 1991]. There
is a Federal regulatory statute wielding authority over the
technique and execution of urinating in your pants. Woe be unto
you if you do not meet Federal standards!
The JAMA article's principle investigator has fashioned a career
from the rarefied professional endeavor of "urodynamics." This
would seem to encompass the incessant observation of tremendous
numbers of elderly people (both sexes) taking a leak, immediately
following by threading all sorts of sophisticated and elongated
hardware up their urethras and into their bladders for a
government-sponsored look about (National Institute on Aging
Grant R37AGO8678). I suspect Vlad the Impaler rarely savored
happier days.
Could YOU pass a "timed performance-based assessment of toileting
skills?" Does demonstrated failure authorize confiscation,
impoundment, levied fines (per occurrence per day), and
imprisonment? The Food and Drug Administration can raze your
workplace at a bureaucratic whim. If Official displeasure in
turn displeases you, you can write a letter to your Congressional
Representative, who will inform you of the righteousness of the
act. Regulation is not bound by the restraining niceties
attendant to legislation. Had David Koresh's Branch Davidians
been declared an "unsafe medical device," they could have been
expunged with not one Washington eyebrow raised in consternation.
Due process is for police states. We have a safety net.
Getting back to extemporaneous micturation, the golden-aged
subjects of this study were "recruited." The collected erudite
ramblings of the many authors listed upon the masthead are
felicitously cryptic as to the magnitude of voluntary nature of
personal commitment to this study, which whimsically indulged in
mostly mentally scrambled subjects. I hope my retirement and
possible mental incapacitation are imbued with greater dignity
than that obtaining from:
"Now Mr. Schwartz, if you would take off your hospital robe to
expose your withered flanks and proceed to urinate in front of
all of us, Nurse Nancy can click her stopwatch while Nurse Eunice
measures dynamic volume clearance with this graduated cylinder.
Then we will strap you down and shove this thick metal pipe,
stuffed to bursting with state-of-the-art optics and a bright
light, up your weenie and into your bladder while you scream."
I bet the videotapes are Classified/Top Secret, and viewed by a
select few only during very special poker nights at the Capitol.
Either that, or Chelsea Clinton is about to submit an awesomely
memorable Show-and-Tell homework assignment. Do you think that
minorities will be equitably represented?
The study has been completed and published, one of a long string
of such scholarly enquiries stretching long into the past and the
bibliography and, no doubt, applied for funding way into the
future. This dedicated staff will be studying minutely every
steaming stream and saffron drip well into the next millennium,
seeking the truth and its implementation into a brighter future
for all of us. Meaty conduits beyond counting will be forcibly
dilated through their entire length and occasionally bloodily
ruptured that every possible miracle of technology be brought to
bear. I can hardly endure the anticipation while awaiting
Federal enforcement among the civilian population, weaving the
safety net ever tighter for our own good.
Imagine that bright, bright day when an 0200 hrs call by the
armed might of the Surgeon General breaks down your door, turned
out with a duly authorized search warrant, many big guns, and a
long cold steel urethroscope. It is enough to make one piss
one's pants.